‘The Beast’ A Cut Above Other Gems Record Topaz Will Be Part Of Gem And Mineral Fair

The world knows it as “The American Golden Topaz,” a transparent beauty weighing 22,892.5 carats. That’s 12.3 pounds!

Leon Agee remembers it by another name: “The Beast.”

Agee, chairman of next weekend’s 38th annual Gem, Jewelry and Mineral Fair at the Spokane Interstate Fairgrounds, devoted more than 500 hours to cutting and polishing the American Golden.

And he’s responsible for persuading its owner, the Smithsonian Institution, to allow it to leave Washington, D.C.

The American Golden, worth an estimated $400,000, will be the centerpiece of next weekend’s fair. The event also will feature other unusual topazes, plus trade boothes, demonstrations, a silent auction and door prizes.

Agee’s introduction to the American Golden came 12 years ago, when he worked at a Walla Walla jewelry store.

The gemstone’s owner back then, University of Washington sociology professor and amateur rockhound Ed Borgatta, had acquired a weathered 26-pound Brazilian topaz and cut it down to 15 pounds, revealing the stone’s rare golden-yellow coloring with faint chevrons of blue.

Borgatta had neither the time nor the expertise to complete the cutting job, so he contacted mineralogical clubs across the West in search of assistance.

The Spokane club knew of Agee’s experience with larger gemstones, and forwarded Borgatta’s request for help. The two men spoke over the phone, but that didn’t prepare Agee for his first encounter with the giant gemstone.

“When I saw it, I was startled,” Agee recalls. “I’d cut a 1,500-carat piece of quartz for a guy in Arkansas, but this was 20 times that size. I was awestruck.”

But not intimidated. Agee agreed to pursue the project in his spare time, as long as he could work at his own pace.

Just building a machine big enough to cut the stone took Agee six months. He then attached the stone to a turntable using epoxy and set to work.

“But 10 seconds into the cutting, the stone popped off and rolled around the top of the machine,” Agee says. If he hadn’t caught the unwieldy chunk before it hit the basement floor, the story may have ended there.

After more research he began again, this time using a special two-ton epoxy. As Agee painstakingly cut and polished 172 different planes on the stone’s surface to achieve a rectangular “cushion-cut” design, word spread among gem enthusiasts that a world-record-breaker was in the works.

The Smithsonian expressed interest in the topaz, as long as its finished weight exceeded the existing record-holder, the 21,327-carat Brazilian Princess. (The Smithsonian had lost the Brazilian Princess to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and apparently curatorial pride was at stake.)

Several times Agee was asked to take the stone out of his machine and weigh it, but he refused.

“I was trying to keep it low-key,” Agee says. “No one but my wife (and Borgatta) even knew I was working on it in my basement.”

When he finished the job on New Year’s Day 1988, Agee faced a new challenge: no jeweler’s scale could weigh so large a gem. So arrangements were made for a scientist at the nearby Hanford Nuclear Reservation to weigh it on a laboratory scale.

When the official weigh-in confirmed that the American Golden was the world’s largest faceted, or cut, gem, Agee was “euphoric” but not surprised. He’d secretly had a grocer friend in Walla Walla weigh it on an electronic meat scale and already knew, even allowing for a margin of error, that the American Golden was almost a pound heavier than the Brazilian Princess.

Borgatta offered the topaz to the Smithsonian if the museum could come up with $40,000 to cover some of the costs associated with acquiring, cutting and insuring the stone. The Smithsonian, in turn, asked members of the American Federation of Mineralogical Societies to raise the money, which they did.

On May 4, 1988, Agee and Borgatta were present for the Smithsonian’s dedication ceremony in the Hall of Gems. After touring internationally for a year, the American Golden Topaz took its place of honor in the nation’s capital.

And Agee took his place among the nation’s respected gem cutters.

Now there’s word that a team of cutters has faceted an even larger topaz. If so, the American Golden may lose its place in “The Guinness Book of Records.”

But only Agee can say he singlehandedly cut a gem as large as the American Golden. Only he can claim to have tamed “The Beast.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)

MEMO: Hours for the Gem, Jewelry and Mineral Fair are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $3 for adults, $1.50 for students, with Scouts in uniform and children under 9 years old admitted free. The Spokane Interstate Fairgrounds are at Broadway and Havana in the Spokane Valley. For more information about the gem fair, call 535-7342.